Webcam and LED Indicator

How do I know that someone has hacked my laptop webcam? My webcam has an LED that will turn on if the camera is activated. Can a hacker bypass the LED? I am thinking of just cover the camera but that would look ugly

I'd say it's very unlikely that the LED could be isolated to turn off whilst the camera is active. What's worse, putting something like a small removeable sticker over the lens hole, or being viewed ? So even if the camera was activated, nobody could see anything.

Don't forget about the microphone either, you would have to completely silence that by physically removing the wires, or with a switch.

Disabling both the mic and camera in the software panel will work, but could be activated by malware.